


Bound

by twilight_shades



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Codependency, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mental Health Issues, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Self-Destruction, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28398717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilight_shades/pseuds/twilight_shades
Summary: What holds them together.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Bound

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Do not own. Complete fiction.

It’s been months since Hannibal had left him at a private facility in Portugal. Will has no idea how Hannibal got them there, but there was some money and identification documentation he thinks Hannibal must have had made up years ago. Will hasn’t heard or seen anything from him or of him. Will doesn’t know if it is a ploy or not, but while Will is presumed dead, they are still looking for Hannibal, according to the news. 

Will is… uneasy, thinking about Hannibal’s absence. Hannibal very obviously hasn’t been caught, or well, not by any official agency, at least. However, as impressive as Hannibal is, he isn’t invulnerable or immortal, and he had been injured. But, Will thinks maybe something else is keeping Hannibal away, some combination of an odd protective impulse, Hannibal’s weird gallantry, at least a little fear of Will seeing too much, and Hannibal getting too wrapped up in Will. Will’s memory of Hannibal leaving him are somewhat fuzzy, but Will very much doubts Hannibal had intended to leave Will on his own for very long. Will doesn’t think Hannibal can, actually. Even so, it could take a lot longer than Will is willing to wait for Hannibal’s ardor with Will to override Hannibal’s self-control. 

Will is mostly recovered, given the serious blood loss, three different surgeries, a bad infection, and grueling physical therapy. He’s still underweight - the injuries, the antibiotics for the infection, and the pain had brought his weight low enough for them to put him on a feeding tube for a while. Even though he’s gained some back since then and even put on some muscle and his shoulder is better than it has been in a long time, he could still stand to gain ten to fifteen pounds. He eats, actually feel like eating, now, but his metabolism is still out of whack. For now, that may actually be a good thing. His hair is longer and lightened from spending time in the sun, he has a small scar on his face that doesn’t much look like a scar, but does make him look less like he did, subtly changing the contours of his face, and he’s taken to keeping his face clean shaven. All that, along with his thinness, means he doesn’t look like any current pictures of Will Graham out there, which feels safer, even if the presumption of death is not just a ruse. He does, however, look much younger, which is annoying because of the way people treat him and the reason he’s often kept his face stubbled.

Will is okay with being thought dead. He’d had a rushed conversation with Molly before the fight with Dolarhyde. He hadn’t been planning on dying, but that probability had been on his mind when he’d told her he wouldn’t be back. Well, there had also been the possibility of the thing blowing up in a different way and him ending up in prison or at BSHCI again. He’d told her goodbye and she had said she understood. He doesn’t know if that’s true or not. He hopes so. She’ll be okay without him.

Hannibal had left Will with plenty of money, even if, in Will’s blurry recall, Hannibal had seemed to think it wasn’t much, Will could live on it for a long time. Will finds a place in Greece and settles there. Will needs a plan now to get Hannibal’s attention, to draw him to Will. Will could probably go after him, find him, but they’ve already played that game. He does keep an eye on crime news for any hints of Hannibal. He doesn’t read anything that feels like Hannibal, but something there does spark his imagination - a serial killer, though no one has figured it out yet, even if the pattern stands out to Will like a lighted path. 

He has an idea of what would work, but any plan will need to be subtle because Will doesn’t want to catch Jack’s notice or, really, notice from anyone affiliated with the FBI or Interpol. As he makes preparations to catch and kill the killer, he admits to himself what he’s been denying, that its easy to think of killing, that he’s not bothered by it. If it was someone he considered innocent he would be bothered, he thinks. He hopes. 

That stops Will, makes him think about what will happen when Hannibal comes back, what Will can live with and what he can’t. Will Hannibal be able to make the compromises that Will is pretty sure he needs? If not, Will may have to try to take Hannibal out in earnest. Taking Hannibal over the cliff hadn’t been a sincere attempt to kill him and Hannibal had seemed to understand that. Will had just wanted Hannibal with him. He wonders if Hannibal would be angry or pleased by Will seriously considering killing Hannibal. Probably both. 

~~~

It takes longer than Will is happy with to set everything up. He’s still within the deadline he had set for himself, but he feels like he should have been faster. And he knows that more time spent ups the chances of getting caught. Still, it’s worked out pretty well. He hadn’t even needed to bring anything in with him for the killing. Will had used the drug cocktail on the killer, Cal Marku, that Marku had used on his victims to keep them docile and strung him up using the cord Marku used to restrain them. It’s a pity Will couldn’t use the exact method Marku had on his victims, but strangulation by hands wouldn’t really be feasible for a ‘suicide’. 

Marku has a wall with a shrine of newspaper articles in several languages about his kills along with other murders that Will had immediately decided to hang him in front of when Will had broken into the place to scout it out and finalize his plans for the kill. Will uses a marker to circle words in the articles for his message to Hannibal. Instead of bringing a token that Hannibal would catch the meaning of as Will had been figuring to do, finding the wall of articles Marku had thoughtfully constructed just meant Will had had learn a few words in a few different languages. Fortunately, the reporters are very much into juxtaposition and there are more than a few instances of a word meaning beautiful or a close approximation thereof.

In the days that follow, almost all the news stories mention the wall and the marked words and Will is somewhat disturbed by how much it satisfies him. But Will is unsure if any of coverage of Marku’s death will reach Hannibal, wherever he is. Will starts planning the next as he waits to see if Hannibal will come, though he lets a fair amount of time pass, both to keep the deaths from being connected in any law enforcement circles and for Hannibal.

~~~

The second one, Will sets up to look like a victim got the upper hand and one of the killer’s guns, killed him, and ran. Will brings a Dali print of The Persistence of Memory and makes sure the blood splatters nicely across it. He waits, longer this time. Will wonders if maybe the message was too oblique. No, Hannibal would understand the reference of misshapen clocks. 

Will sets up the third to look like a mundane accident, fitting since the killer is so damn typical. Will places several Old Spice bottles in the room the killer used to kill his victims. Then Will waits and waits and at some point begins to wonder if Hannibal is maybe waiting for something more. Will worries about why Hannibal isn’t responding. 

After the fourth, when he still hasn’t heard or seen anything of Hannibal, Will tries to think of a good reason for that. But only two explanations keep coming to the forefront - he can’t or he won’t. Hannibal isn’t invincible, he can be hurt, he can be killed. And sure, it would be a big deal, something Will would definitely hear about, that is, of course, if Hannibal was actually identified as himself. But people die every day without anyone knowing who they are. The infinitely more likely scenario, however, is that Hannibal is done with Will. He’s made Will see, Hannibal has achieved what he set out to do with Will and now Hannibal has moved on. When Will finally allows himself to acknowledge that that is probably why Hannibal hasn’t come, Will feels blindsided, gutted in way he wasn’t when Hannibal took an actual knife to Will’s abdomen. Will shouldn’t be surprised, Hannibal has always been good at tearing Will down.

After a while of blank misery, Will decides that’s enough. And he starts to plan the fifth and his final message. Given the nature of it, though, Hannibal won’t be the only one to see it. He might be the only one to fully understand it. Or maybe not, Will is no longer sure of anything with Hannibal. It takes some time to find someone he thinks is a suitable adversary (not _worthy_ , exactly, but not far off from that idea either). But he finds someone, Elias Mytaras, not a dragon, but maybe a minotaur. Mytaras likes to play games, let his victims flounder their through his labyrinthine puzzles, only to realize they never had a chance of escaping. He’s cunning and creative and relentless, someone that Will alone won’t necessarily beat. 

It is a brutal fight, which Will anticipated. There are a few points where Will isn’t sure that he can bring the other man down with him, which Will knew was a possibility, but not one he’s willing to just surrender to, so he digs in, goes at Mytaras with all the viciousness Will has. It’s enough. Mytaras falls atop Will, finally unmoving. Mytaras is very heavy and Will finds he doesn’t have the strength to move him. It’s hard to breathe and Will wonders distantly if he’ll die of compressive asphyxia before the blood loss. He doesn’t suppose it matters. Will had wondered if he was going to struggle against dying at the last, but he feels pretty numb. He closes his eyes.

~~~

Will comes to awareness and is bemused to find that there is an afterlife after all, but then he realizes that the detachment he feels to his body is drug-induced, not metaphysical, Hannibal is actually sitting in a chair next to the bed that Will is on, and neither of them are dead. Hannibal is here and Will is still alive and neither of those things make much sense to Will. And Hannibal looks… different. He looks small, diminished somehow. They look at each other without saying anything for a long moment. Then Will’s hand twitches and he realizes there are soft cuffs around his wrists attached to either side of the bed. He’s weirdly amused by that. He means to say something, something about the difference in putting himself in harm’s way and harming himself. He also wants to ask about what Hannibal did with Mytaras’ body, Hannibal probably didn’t even get to eat any of it or anything. Poor Hannibal, he didn’t get to have any dragon and now, no minotaur, all because of Will (Will may be even more drugged than he thought he was). A wave of tiredness sweeps over him and he’s asleep before he can say anything.

Will wakes to Hannibal checking his wounds. Will’s wrists are still in the cuffs. Will watches silently as Hannibal puts clean dressings on the long slashes on Will side and the deeper gash on his thigh. “Why didn’t you come?” Will asks finally, his voice raspy.

Hannibal purses his lips. And then turns and goes to a side table that has a tray with a pitcher of water and glasses on it. He pours water into the glass, his back to Will as he says, “I wanted to watch, I wanted to see what you would do. How you would signal me without letting anyone else know.” He brings the glass over to Will, sits down next to him, and holds Will’s head up so that he can drink.

Will’s mind isn’t moving very quickly, he hasn’t quite caught up to reality, he thinks. “You aren’t done with me?”

Hannibal frowns, looking consternated. “Not ever,” he says abruptly, with an intense fierceness. Hannibal blinks then, looking a little thrown, as if his own fervor had surprised him.

Will raises his eyebrows.

“I will admit there was a time when I thought I could be.” Hannibal runs a thumb over the thin scar on Will’s forehead. “I have lost people who are dear to me, the circumstances of that and my own determination have turned me into what I am today. If I lost you, too, now, well, people would see what a true monster is, I think.”

“But you stayed away.”

Hannibal’s mouth twists unhappily. “Yes. That was a… misstep on my part. I am unaccustomed to taking anyone else’s feelings or needs into account, except in the most cursory sense. I did not mean to make you feel as of I had, hmm, abandoned you. Your designs, given the limitations imposed, were quite appealing. I thought you were doing well.”

Will looks at Hannibal contemplatively. “I’m not like you.” 

Hannibal looks like he wants to argue, but seems to reconsider.

“It’s beautiful, it is, but, to me, it’s also ugly. You know that, right?”

Hannibal takes a moment. “Yes, I suppose I do know that. Or I did at one time. I cannot say that it occurred to me to consider how that might affect you since you began your cortege.”

“I have lived a pretty solitary life, but I’ve reached out, tried to connect with others, I just never really could. But then I did. And however twisted that connection has been, I’m not sure I can be without it anymore. I thought, I thought after everything, the mind games, the betrayals, literally trying to cut each other out of our lives, I would be better off without it. But when you went to BSHCI and I was drowning, I latched on to someone,” Will pauses at Hannibal’s dark glower and then continues gingerly, “and we kept each other afloat, both of us at sea, but I think after a while I was keeping her there, treading water.”

“We have changed each other, truly. And we both need to learn how to navigate those changes. I need to, more than you, I think. You have done more adapting than I have.”

“Communication is key when navigating life changes,” Will intones in that clear, calm, slightly superior manner that he’s heard variants of from umpteen mental health ‘experts’.

Hannibal’s lips quirk a bit in amusement. “Yes, I suppose it is quite pat and something of a stock concept that those involved in matters of the psyche turn to when interacting with someone… shall we say aloof?”

“I was trying for unapproachable, at the very least,” Will says, smiling wryly.

“I cannot say I’ve ever not wanted to approach you,” Hannibal says, his amusement softening until his smile is just fond. “Still, though it may be trite, it is not untrue.”

Will meets his eyes and it takes a long moment before Will is able to force himself to say simply and starkly, “I don’t want to be alone in this.”

“I did not mean to make you think that you were. You know you intrigued me from the first. However, others had done so before you and so I sought to make you like them, one of my… projects. You dismissed me and I should’ve known then, but I didn’t or maybe I had an inkling, and yet I still tried to treat you like the others. And that did not work. Somehow you gained the power to hurt me, to cut me very deeply indeed. And I thought I could leave you behind. That did not work. So, I thought to consume you, but well… It was when you bit Cordell Doemling that I fully realized what you meant to me. I cannot leave you behind, not truly. I have you in my mind palace, it sustained me, along with my plans, for a time. That is not enough anymore. I will not let you go.”

“I don’t think I should be comforted by that, but I am,” Will says ruefully.

Hannibal leans forward, slowly moving his head towards Will’s. He stops, hovers there, just an inch of space between them. He doesn’t do anything, though, until Will tilts his head in invitation and then he finally closes the distance. Like most things between them, the kiss is intense, though there’s a sweetness to it Will didn’t expect. Hannibal leans back slowly and just looks at Will, eyes soft. He strokes a finger lightly along Will’s stubble. “You’ve let it grow back.”

“Yeah.” Will had stopped doing a full shave while planning the last, wanting to look more like what he was used to, and he had had a thought about maybe making identification easier, too. Will considers Hannibal’s expression. “You like this better.” Interesting. Given Hannibal’s propensity towards being well-groomed when possible, Will would have thought he would prefer the clean-shaven look on Will.

“You, of course, were lovely without it, as always, though more fey. But you looked very young. I found being reminded that there was a time when I did not know you, when you did not know me, somewhat grating.”

Will gives a surprised snort and tries to reach for Hannibal. “Could we get rid of these, now?” Will asks, pulling at the cuffs. “I wasn’t planning to do myself harm.”

“I don’t know, while I will acknowledge your tendency is rather to put yourself into lethal situations and let someone else try to do you injury, you did tip yourself over a cliff.”

“You know that if I wasn’t willing to court danger and death, you wouldn’t be nearly so interested in me. And there’s no way I would be with you without it.”

Hannibal weighs that. “You do have a point.” Hannibal releases Will’s wrists from their constraints.

Will grabs hold of Hannibal’s shirt and pulls at him until Hannibal is fully on the bed with Will. It’s a narrow bed and Hannibal is not a small man, so he’s mostly lying atop Will. But, though Will’s chest aches a bit, he doesn’t feel smothered at all by this, he feels bound, in a different way.

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you find any typos or if the format is messed up or if you think I need any tags.


End file.
